I tried all yesterday to write about my darling Scooter, but it’s hard to type when your paws are soaking wet.
Now that
ain’t right! Because along with being sweet, sensitive, thoughtful and smart, Scooter was funny as hell! I laughed out loud every time I got one of her poop reports. They were so detailed (and frequent) that
Coco's Department of Homeland Security made her a Poop Advisory Color System chart to keep track. For a while she sent us daily Monk-e-mails that made her look like one of The
Jeffersons, sound like Dame Edna, and cause my Mom to blow coffee out of her nose at work.
(In this picture, Scooter is escaping from her Mom's collectible bears!)
Scooter fell asleep at parties, but she did know how to have fun. When my brother
Mouse started his gallery,
Mouseworks, she created some very original “earth art” by digging up corn kernels in her back yard. One of
Baby’s first friends, Scooter co- founded
Olde Furts with her. But it took Scooter to transform a cranky
Meezers’ refuge into a source of hope and help, good humor and hugs for hundreds of
Catster’s aging kits. Old age
ain’t fur sissies, and Scooter was up to the task
Sometimes I think of Scooter as
Catster’s Princess Di, just a bit long in the tooth. Her skill, as her profile read, was love. Nobody
didn’t love Scooter. And Scooter loved everyone back. Her gift, I think, was for seeing—not so much the best in everyone, although that was often the case, but rather for seeing just what made you, you. She was a great connoisseur. What else would a classy lady like
Scootie be doing with a naughty boy like me? And a
Democat at that?
Catster is a community built on intangibles: love, imagination, compassion and memory. So even as
Scootie leaves the physical plane her spirit remains as one of the cornerstones of our community. But at this sad time we must also remember that these cats are beautiful avatars; what animates them, for all of us, what makes them what they are, is the people who love them in real time.
And for Scooter’s parents, life won’t be the same. No snoozing Scooter in the sunny window perched on her favorite sofa, not to sleepy to tell an interloper, “Hiss off.” No skinny Scooter teetering gamely along as she “walks the line” in her backyard, looking for lizards, daring that roadrunner to make another appearance. No
Scootie, so silly in her baby buggy. Or lying on their legs at night.
Scooter was my entire family’s friend and my “secret
fiancé.” We loved her with all our hearts and will miss her every day—as will all her
Catster friends. But it’s to Bonnie and Dean that we must send our love, our appreciation, and our most comforting purrs.
~
Ray & Tracy
Pretty in plumbago, our favorite picture of Scooter.
lp we need.
